Talking Success As A Developer, Conference Design & Development, and Much More:

Charles Max Wood is a coach and podcast host at Top End Devs. He’s building a system to help developers advance their careers by building their skills, personal brands, and networks. He’s been podcasting about programming since 2008. He lives in Utah with his wife and 5 children.

Chuck is also the author of “The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job.” The podcasts he produces reach more than 80,000 developers every week.

Today’s Top 3 Takeaways:

1. Keep learning and keep practicing.
2. Build your network beyond your local community.
3. Growing into success with Conferences.

Today’s Guest & Resource Links:

• https://topenddevs.com/
• Book: The MaxCoders Guide To Finding Your Dream Developer Job – https://amzn.to/2Jrh5A8
• https://instagram.com/charlesmaxwood

Our Mentioned Influencers:

• https://jsnation.com/
• https://reactsummit.com/

Watch us on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/W09mt6J6WHQ?si=iRoyZSd1X59nHOpz

Timestamped Show Notes:

00:30 – Introduction

03:30 – It was it was actually super fun. So the conferences were both in this old engine building factory that had been refurbished into like a venue for events. And so they have all of the old. Like the cranes in there and stuff. I mean, obviously, they’re not moving it or using it. But yeah, you go in and they had a big screen down all the way at the end of the room. And they had speakers rooms upstairs. And anyway, it was it was very, very cool, then you a lot of the people that they had at the event, were some of the people that were kind of pushing the state of the art forward in JavaScript. And so and some of them I knew already, some of them we’d had on like JavaScript Jabber, which is our big podcast on JavaScript. And so yeah, so just meeting up with him in person, you know, getting to know him shaking hands. I recorded a handful of interviews.

10:00 – The difference is, and it’s kind of the same thing that I did with Microsoft for five or six years, is if you go as a speaker or influencer, it’s a different thing. If you’re going as an attendee, sometimes even some of the conferences just going as a speaker, it’s different than going as an influencer. If you’re one of the people that they go out of their way to get to the conference, then a lot of times, they’ll pull out all the stops.

19:30 – The other version of that is none of these technologies standstill. None of them do. So even if you’re working in a place that is hey, we’re going to stick on the version we’re at, we’re gonna use the technology we know. You find all kinds of opportunities learning the next thing in the technology you’re already an expert in. Maybe you want to go with indie game development, which is one area that I want to branch into. It’s super popular, and there’s a ton of stuff going on, and it’s getting easier. So if that’s an area of interest for you, by all means, if you want to move into management, then you’re talking about project management, people management and helping them do essentially what I’m doing just one on one.

22:20 – The video game standing in for real life for military applications, you know, where maybe you replicate a cockpit, or combat situations where you’re carrying a weapon and things like that. With AR and VR opening it up, you don’t even see the gun, you carry the prop, that is a game controller. But going beyond that, like office professionals these days, a lot of the stuff that they’re doing, the interactive stuff that they’re learning, that’s all being done with game development technology. They’re using Unity, which is an engine for building video games. So from there, it’s not just watch a video and then click on the right answers in the quiz anymore, which is what I did in a past corporate life. But now it’s literally you’re working through a work function, or you’re documenting and outlining some process that you have to do at work

31:20 – Final Words Shown Below…

Our Final Words of the Show:

The way that I got into the conference thing in the first place, was I had a listener to one of the shows, who wanted to have a Ruby track at a conference that he was helping organize. So he set it all up, they got us to come out, I actually lined up for a bunch of my friends to come out as speakers. We went up to Vancouver and while I was there, there was another podcast called .NET.

So .NET is Microsoft’s technology stack. They were doing a series on agile development. It’s a methodology, it’s a set of principles for running a team. They asked me to join the panel, because I had a different take on things because I came from a different background. So I joined the panel got to know the guys that ran that show. It turned out that they were the ones that wound up one of those guys who ended up organizing the podcast setup at the Microsoft events. So sometimes it works to get to know the people directly involved. But sometimes it helps just to get to know people and empower people who eventually introduce you to those people.

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Chuck Returns To Talk Success As a Developer, Conference Development, and More:

Chuck aka Charles Max Wood returns. He is the host of several podcasts including JavaScript Jabber and Ruby Rogues all available at Devchat.tv. He’s the author of “The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job.” He started podcasting in 2008. The podcasts he produces reach more than 80,000 developers every week. Chuck lives in Utah with his wife and 5 children.

Today’s Top 3 Takeaways:

1. Keep learning and keep practicing.
2. Build your network beyond your local community.
3. Executive aka Virtual Assistants, Growing your team.

Today’s Guest & Resource Links:

• https://topenddevs.com/
• Book: The MaxCoders Guide To Finding Your Dream Developer Job – https://amzn.to/2Jrh5A8
• https://devchat.tv
• https://www.facebook.com/DevChattv
• https://twitter.com/cmaxw
• https://instagram.com/charlesmaxwood

Timestamped Show Notes:

00:30 – Introduction

04:30 – So at Devchat.tv, we had podcasts, and it was just a podcast network as the focus. So what we were doing is we were releasing shows in a number of different areas. JavaScript is something that I think a lot of people have heard about if you’ve been on the web. We had shows on Ruby, React is JavaScript for the web. So we have shows about all kinds of stuff like that. I’m looking, at this point, pulling together a couple of shows and putting out products now and that’s where the rebrand came in. So some of the new shows are going to be on game development and then the products are going to center around Front-End Web Development, game development, machine learning, security, stuff like that. Those, those are the the areas where, like it or not, I mean, that’s where things are growing. So effectively, the rebrand came into play when I went through a period in 2019, where the not so nice people on Twitter decided they wanted my business to crash and burn.

10:00 – Ultimately that was the other thing, a lot of the questions I get are, how do I advance? How do I move out? How do I move ahead? My answer is mostly you got to do stuff that people aren’t doing. So that’s consistent learning, consistent practice, consistent growth, meeting other people. It is building your network beyond your local community, making contributions to the community, putting content out there, if you’re doing those kinds of things, that’s where the growth is. So that’s where my focus has been now is, I’m gonna give you content to level up your technical skills. That’s kind of obvious to most people in the development space, and to people who think about the development space for about half a minute. 

20:00 – Initially, I hired my executive assistant or virtual assistant, she’s in Philippines, by the way, which is a great source for that. I would just hand her tasks that needed to be done. She at this point succeeded, so we’ve hired somebody else to help her. If there’s something she can’t figure out how to do, or she knows that I already know how to do, then I’ll record a video and I’ll send it over. But probably half of the stuff she does, at this point is stuff that she has determined will get us toward our goals. So she just takes the lead on a lot of that. At this point, what we’re doing now is we’re getting clear on our strategic plan. We are documenting, so now she’s building checklists, this is how we do this.

25:50 – The other piece of this is, is that I’m intending to do that, I already named the areas I was focused in, but I’m intending to do courses on a premium basis for those. So they’re not just courses so much as they’re, hey, here’s your weekly training! It’s 10 minute videos, you get two of them a week. So if you want to stay up on the technology area, that’s what we’re doing. Then the same thing with a lot of the career and soft skills education too.

30:45 – Final Words Shown Below…

Our Final Words of the Show:

What I found is that mostly, it’s just that consistent effort, right? There’s something to be said, for planning ahead. So where do I want to end up? What are some of the intermediate steps? Maybe look a year out or three months out, what are kind of the time horizons that I like to plan for? So what do I deliver every day? For 90 days, to be well on track for that.

Then the other thing we talked a little bit about, just getting cancelled on Twitter and stuff like that. The other thing is, is that you really do have to figure out who you are and where you want to end up. Because at the end of the day, I was coasting at that point. I mean, I had a $300,000 business, but I was coasting. I was going to the conferences and sure, I’d find new sponsors. I’d show up, I was having fun, but I wasn’t reaching the potential that I wanted, that I knew I could reach, but I was comfortable. So it’s a blessing when you have a hardship that forces you to rethink things. Just be really clear about where you want to end up. Where are you going? What is this about? Then that consistent effort will start getting you to where you’re most focused.

Positive Actions:

Get my book on Amazon today! “So You Want To Be A Hotshot” – HotshotBook.com

Positive Reviews “DO” help grow books and free podcast shows, those review really do matter!

Did you submit your 5-Star Review on iTunes? – Submit a Review

Need a charity to believe in? Check out our 501c-3 non-profit! Visit – FuelFoundations.org

Need brand growth, sales strategy, marketing execution?! Visit – FuelUpMarketing.com

The post Developers, Online Courses, Conferences, and Podcasting appeared first on LIVETHEFUEL.